Facebook and IBM Team Up to Supercharge Personalized Ads

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Facebook and IBM Team Up to Supercharge Personalized Ads

Facebook and IBM are teaming up to help retailers better target advertising on the world's largest social network.

Today, the two companies announced that they're working together to integrate Facebook's existing ad targeting technology into IBM's own line of tools and services for retailers. By combining retail data, such as purchase history or items viewed, with Facebook's user data, the two companies hope to create more finely personalized marketing campaigns on behalf of their customers.

For example, a retailer could place ads for items you've previously viewed on its site directly into your Facebook feed. The new tools could also be used to help target particular segments, such as runners, for ads.

Online advertisers have long used browser cookies—small chunks of data stored on users' computers—to create ads that "follow" users around on the web. But by tying Facebook's advertising platform directly into its own, IBM hopes to make these ad campaigns easier to create and more effective. "These new capabilities will allow Facebook to deliver more relevant, more personalized experiences," says Jay Henderson, a director of strategy for IBM commerce.

Like most other aging tech giants, the 103-year-old IBM is has been working to retool itself for era mobile devices, social media, and cloud computing. To that end, it has invested $1 billion into a cloud version of its Jeopardy winning artificial intelligence platform Watson, inked a deal with Twitter to bring its mountain of data into Watson, and partnered with both Apple and Japan's postal service to build mobile services for senior citizens. Today's announcement fits into that strategy, but it doesn't involve Watson. Instead, it's a deal with IBM Commerce, a division of IBM that offers analytics and marketing tools and services to retailers.

Henderson says that Facebook's dominance in social media made it a natural partner for its own marketing ambitions. Despite the rise of apps like Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook remains the most popular social network in the world even among teens, making the site integral to any online marketing strategy.

Facebook employees will also participate in IBM Commerce THINKLab consulting practice, which helps companies develop new digital marketing strategies. "This is the beginning of a very broad partnership with IBM," Henderson says. "We'll be collaborating quite a bit moving forward."